Over a crackly line from Paris this afternoon, Rick Owens kindly spared some time to share his reaction to being named the recipient of the CFDA’s 2017 Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award. Since its establishment in 1984, this peach of the prizes at the CFDA Fashion Awards has been handed to a canon of creatively compelling industry figures—a list that has been recently all-American, but that once regularly spanned the Atlantic (both Hubert de Givenchy and Yves Saint Laurent won it twice in the ’90s).

Owens is very much a North American designer. He was raised a bibliophile and (classical) melomaniac in Porterville, California. He is, via his mother, Connie, of partial-Mexican descent. He partied hard and honed his aesthetic proclivities haunting Los Angeles’s Spotlight club and Hollywood Boulevard in the late ’80s and ’90s. Yet he is far from defined by his American-ness, and has been based since 2003 in Paris alongside his French-born wife Michèle Lamy. They made that move just two seasons after Owens made his New York runway debut in February 2002. In the 15 years since, he has delivered a portfolio of work you can see in full, here.

But back to that call.

Hi Rick, thanks for calling! So the first question has to be: How does it feel to receive this Lifetime Achievement award?

“I’m just tickled to death! I know perhaps the first thing I’m supposed to say is ‘Oh, it makes me feel so old,’ but it actually doesn’t; it’s incredibly flattering. Especially because this award, at least in my head, is recognizing a body of work rather than just one collection. And that is exactly what I want: for everything that I do to be part of a body of work, all related. So for this council of aesthetic leaders to focus their general approval in my direction is very validating.

When I look at this I’m thinking that I’m part of a cultural moment. That kind of participation in the world is very fulfilling. We all want to be involved and we all want to be recognized for being special, so when that happens . . . you’ve really won! Wow! Does that sound like I’m gloating? I really wouldn’t want to sound like that. I’m just very happy.”

You have been based in Paris for so long, but your runway life started in New York way back when . . .

“Yes, and it was very significant. I’d been selling clothes for around five years in stores like Bendel’s. I had just a tiny little rack. I’d take the clothes to the store, show them to somebody in the back of the store and sell them like that. It was American Vogue that made the shows happen. In fact, André Leon Talley called me out of the blue. And he said: ‘This is André Leon Talley. I saw your collection in the window of Bendel’s and I want you to see Anna [Wintour].’ And I said: ‘Okay!’ Soon afterward they offered me a runway show with their endorsement and support. And that was, of course, an incredible opportunity. But I was still a little hesitant. Because I thought my clothes were really not from that world. And I worried that, while one show or two shows I could do, I was not going to change fast enough or be exciting enough to withstand that kind of scrutiny. I thought I risked burning everything down, or burning it out, by doing these shows; whereas if I stayed quietly doing my thing in my Los Angeles corner, I could keep sustaining a nice thing. But, you know: When you get an opportunity like that, it’s kind of like, hey, I’m 45, I might as well try and take a chance. American Vogue gave me all the best production support, the best models; they totally supported me. And that gave me significant exposure, which allowed a lot of people to have enough time to register who I was and what I did. And you know I’m not sure that so many emerging designers get that chance today; we are so oversaturated, there are so many events, and in the blur of that it’s very difficult to create the space and time for people to register.

So you went for it.

“Yeah! I remember the music for that first show was Iggy Pop and Alice Cooper. It is still one of my favorite soundtracks and I went back to both artists for my first show in Paris too. And I gradually learned, or think I learned, how to be consistent with my aesthetic but to change it enough, too, so that it kind of works. And I think that people at some point just decided to tolerate my pace, and I felt very good about that.”

“Well, I try not to think about my visibility or where I stand in the fashion world. Because that’s just never going to be a comfortable space. I just like to stick to my thing. I’m trying to do something I believe in.”

I may be overreaching here, but it strikes me that as America goes through this painful conservative moment, it is very canny of the CFDA through this prize to promote you, a designer who represents the antithesis of American conservatism, as a personification of U.S. fashion.

“I do think that I am making efforts to balance out conservative energy, and the false morality and judgmental attitude that I’ve always felt uncomfortable with. I do like to tease that. Maybe bring a little karmic balance. But I mean it in the most playful way—not antagonistic, not hostile. The world can be really uptight. Everybody takes everything so seriously now, and the Internet has encouraged us to be so quick to judge, and damn, and disapprove. I’m putting a lot of stuff out there to disapprove of, and I’m doing it gleefully!”

*This interview has been condensed and edited, but only because the riveting Rick Owens font of discourse runneth way over my ability to type in tandem with it.